NRBQ are still on hiatus, maybe for good, but leader Terry Adams’s latest solo set has the sound and the style of a vintage Q album, harking back to the homemade feel of fondly remembered early-’70s releases like Scraps. (The ecologically themed “Nature’s Gonna Pay You Back” is a close cousin to the great Scraps track “Magnet.”) Working with NRBQ drummer Tom Ardolino and Hall & Oates bassist T-Bone Wolk, Adams uses his trademark Clavinet to cover for the lack of guitar. The mix of sweet ballads, scrappy rockers, and left-field novelties is straight out of the NRBQ playbook — only the groove-driven title track leaves you missing the full band. Read between the lines and there may be some veiled messages to his ex-mates: the love song “Every Thing I Do” announces that “I’m gonna stop hanging round the same old clowns,” and the uncharacteristically pointed “Fake Hug” suggests he’s sure pissed at somebody. But Adams’s good nature wins the day, and songs that at first sound like throwaways find their way under your skin.

WALTER SICKERT LEADS A BAND OF MUSICAL MISFITS | February 05, 2011 When Walter Sickert and his Army of Broken Toys played an official First Night show at the Hynes Auditorium on New Year's Eve, they ran overtime and the soundman pulled the plug — which isn't quite the smartest way of shutting down an acoustic band.

REVIEW: ROCK OF AGES | October 12, 2010 At the start of the hair-metal musical Rock of Ages (at the Colonial Theatre through October 17), narrator Lonny (Patrick Lewallen) promises a night of sexy decadence and general kick-assery.